Cell signalling and apoptosis group

The group began research at the University of Lleida in 2001 when Dr. Marta Llovera and Dr. Daniel Sanchis joined to conduct studies on the signaling of survival, differentiation, and death of cells of the nervous system and myocardium. Our research has provided information on relevant aspects of the roles of Calcium / Calmodulin (J Neurochem, 2004; J Biol Chem, 2008) and Tyr-kinase Trk receptors (J Neurochem, 2008; J Neurochem, 2011) in the differentiation process. and neuronal survival, as well as the potential of histone deacetylases as therapeutic tools for the treatment of glioblastoma (Cell Death Dis, 2014). At the same time, we pioneered the loss of apoptotic genes during myocardial development, where they play an important role in the division and differentiation of myocytes (J Cell Sci, 2013; PLoSOne, 2014), and the change of an apoptotic cell death to necrotic cell death during this process, identifying relevant proteins such as EndoG (J Biol Chem, 2006). Deepening the characterization of ENDOG led to the discovery of its involvement in the process of cardiac hypertrophy (Nature, 2011; Redox Biol, 2017) and in the control of cell proliferation (Redox Biol, 2020). Recently, the group has focused an important part of its effort on investigating key and differential aspects of cardiac fibroblasts as cells essential for the proper functioning of the myocardium (FEBS J, 2022).

Our research is possible thanks to the continuous funding obtained mainly from competitive public calls of Organizations such as La Marató de TV3, the Spanish Ministries of Health (ISCIII) and Science (MICINN) and the Agency for the Management of University Grants (AGAUR). of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Our research work has involved the establishment of collaborations, both international (Eric Olson, UTSouthWestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA; Chris Smith, University of Cambridge, UK; Junmei Ye, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, China), as nationals, mainly with groups from Madrid (CNIC) and Barcelona (Vall d'Hebron Research Institute, IDIBAPS, IRB Barcelona), as well as from IRBLLEIDA itself (groups led by Xavier Dolcet, Manel Portero, Joaquim Ros and Andreu Casali ). This has led to the publication of more than 40 articles in indexed international scientific journals and the production of 11 doctoral theses in the last 20 years.